The male glass ceiling

Argh, it be talk like a pirate day, it be. In celebration I plan to read a book about pirates and say argh too much. Argh.

In less amusing news -

MSN article on the male glass ceiling

The premesis, men have trouble breaking into the top ranks of female dominated careers. I don't know if that's true or not but it seems it could be a plausable premis. The problem's not so much with the premis as the way it's carried of.

They decide to dicuss this, for some reason best known to themselves, they need to first work out why women 'gravitate' to certain jobs. Their conclusion -

"Women enter into those areas because they are the most fulfilling," he says. "Men don't because they feel they need to take on the responsibility of providing for the family, and the way they earn love is to earn money."

So women don't work to provide for their family, they work to forfil their caring nature. After all, who needs to support themselves when they have a MAN to do that for them?

Plus, in today's world of double incomes, men are free to pursue career paths they find interesting rather than ones they solely see as financially viable, Kaiser says. "In the past decade, more careers have opened up to women," she notes. "They're becoming lawyers and doctors and scientists, and leaving openings in other areas that men are now filling."

Let's read that another way. In the past, men filled up these jobs. Now the women are coming and taking those jobs away, the poor men are having to fill up the less well paid jobs left behind.

So, the reason women take these jobs is they don't need to support, just be supported, and more men are now taking them because the women are stealing all the big paying jobs (what was I thinking, going to university, the poor man who was destined for the pHd I will eventually get (hopefully) will be pushed out into the street and have to work in something as decidedly unmasculine as child care! Oh no). Anyway, we've established that, so now we need to prove the glass ceiling exists, right? That would be the logical thing to do. No, they give me a casestudy of a guy who rose through the ranks and says he never felt discriminated aginst because of his gender. Useful. But, wait, there's another case study and this one does claim to experince discrimination, but has risen anyway through his hard work and determination!

That mindset certainly contributed to Clifford's success. Says Farrell, "Men tend to be strong in the area of 'doing.' Unlike women, men won't articulate what bothers them about the barriers; instead, their attitude is, 'When the going gets tough, the tough get going.'"

See, it's womens fault for their own opression! Women who try to draw attention to the problem are at fault. We should just be quiet and work hard and pull through! Right, because that works.

It's just, ah! The glass ceiling isn't about women prefering the lowere paid jobs, it's not about women feeling a bit uncomfortable in the office, that's still discrimination but that's something else. The glass ceiling is the invisible barrier that stops women rising through the ranks. It's the old boy's club, the shake of the hand and the job's yours, the inhrant bias that a man's work has more value then a woman's even. And the implication that the ceiling exists because women just don't work hard enough.

Screw that.

Abortion news: Court Won’t Rule on Life’s Beginning

First post, I feel special. I just found this article through Denamlism blog. Court won't rule on life's begining.

A doctor is under no obligation to tell a pregnant woman that she is carrying “an existing human being” before performing an abortion, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled today in a decision that had been eagerly awaited by both foes and supporters of abortion rights in this country.

Quite rightly so. I don't see how people can bring lawsuits like this. I don't know how she couldn't realise before the procedure that terminating her pregnancy would, well, terminate her pregnancy. I'd have thought it would be a no-brainer. The major thing that annoys me about these cases, though, is they're so patronising to the woman. I mean, both this and the law which reguires the woman to view an ultrasound before she aborts, presumes that a woman is so stupid she can't work out that pregnant=baby so needs to be told. I'm sure the vast majority of women who abort can concieve that the fetus is alive and will, barring miscarriage, become a human child if it is not tampered with, and they've decided they want to abort.

I think the fact alone that they have decided that abortion is what they want to do should be enough for anyone, really.

But this entire attitude, "If you knew what you were aborting you wouldn't do it", it's so patronising and, on top of that, plays into the entire woman=mother stereotype. Because we're women knowing that it's a zomg baby means we will want to care for it and nurture it, there's no way we can reject it if it's a baby. Is that it? Well, I've got news for them, there's plenty of women out there who are not baby making machines, who, shock horror, might not particularly like or want babies. Telling them it's a baby (in case they were too dense to work it out for themselves) will have zero effect.

I also have to agree with MarkH that the entire 'life begins' argument is so much bullshit. I've said it before in various forums, life doesn't begin, it's continuous. It's not the virtue of being alive that gives something value, we need to find some other basis to make legal decisions.